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| Another major criticism of IGN are their editors and board administrators. Some of the editors at IGN do not make any effort to visit the boards regularly to chat with IGN Insiders on gaming topics. IGN Xbox is especially guilty of this practice; as Douglass C. Perry and David Clayman have no interest in visiting the boards. | Another major criticism of IGN are their editors and board administrators. Some of the editors at IGN do not make any effort to visit the boards regularly to chat with IGN Insiders on gaming topics. IGN Xbox is especially guilty of this practice; as Douglass C. Perry and David Clayman have no interest in visiting the boards. | ||
| IGN have ] who are responsible for maintaining the boards by editing profanity from posts and banning anyone who constantly breaks the TOS (Terms Of Service). However, IGN doesn't hand out modships to those who deserve them. They are often given to the "friends" of moderators. Often, IGN moderators are like a ] that feel they are above the regular users whether they are Insiders or Outsiders. Many of them respond to people in a cold, rude manner. To become a moderator, you need to be nominated by the other mods. However, some people get no response from the requests. There is a possibility that certain mods will want favors in return for a nomination. Those who are in good with mods away from the IGN Boards stand a better chance of becoming moderators themselves. Many of the mods abuse their power for no reason except to satisfy their ego; removing posts that aren't even in violation of the TOS just so they can show somebody up. | |||
| ], the head of IGN Entertainment Inc., has never responded to a PM from Insiders over complaints and they have a Customer Service area that is never attended to. They have had a history of showing no concern to anyone's queries. The head administrator treats all PMs to him as if they were written by a 13 year-old and has a history of being very disrespectful to those who try to contact him. | |||
| IGN have also been criticised for overrating games in reviews, giving a distorted view of a game's quality, such as when they gave the PC ] ] a rating of 9.7 . This is frequently the subject of ridicule from the community, such as with the ] ]. | IGN have also been criticised for overrating games in reviews, giving a distorted view of a game's quality, such as when they gave the PC ] ] a rating of 9.7 . This is frequently the subject of ridicule from the community, such as with the ] ]. | ||
Revision as of 00:47, 10 March 2005
IGN is a part-free and part-subscription general gaming website. It was founded in 1995, and currently attracts 8 million unique visitors a month, and has 5 million users registered through all departments of the site (including reviews, previews, walkthroughs, codes, and other media).
IGN is ranked among the top 300 most visited websites according to Alexa, and runs some of the most popular forums on the Internet according to Big-boards.com.
Corporate Details
IGN runs on a combination of advertising and subscriptions. IGN Insider is IGN's premium subscription service at $20/year. Insiders get benefits like the ability to disable some ads, access to Insider only forums, and can read Insider only content.
IGN Entertainment was the only gaming website in the stock market (Nasdaq: IGNX), however as of 2003 IGN's stocks are no longer publicly traded.
IGN originally stood for Imagine Games Network, until Imagine Media was acquired by Snowball Inc. Snowball is now known as just IGN Entertainment, thus the IGN acronym has no real meaning. There was a short time when IGN stood for the "Internet Generation Network."
In March 2004 IGN Entertainment and Gamespy Industries merged, and was briefly known for 3 months as IGN/GameSpy before formalizing their corporate name as IGN Entertainment.
In June 2004, IGN bought the popular movie review site, Rotten Tomatoes, and in February 2005 they acquired the popular download site, 3D Gamers.
Message Boards
IGN is also known for its active message boards. The IGN boards were created in late July 2000 as a place of videogame discussion for members of IGN.com. According to Big-boards.com, the RPG Vault Network boards are ranked #3, general IGN boards #4, and theforce.net (Star Wars special interest boards) #10. All together, the three communities have almost 200 million posts. IGN Boards contains many forums on topics ranging from the 3 major video game systems, to cell phones, to DVDs, and gear.
The IGNCB
The IGNCB, or IGN Community Board, opened on September 11th, 2000, as the first community board on IGN. It was created for the "non-video game related content" that was beginning to appear on the video game discussion boards.
I-Boards
When IGN Insider was created, special Insider Boards where created for subscribers. These included boards for different systems, a multiplatform board, and a community board for general disccusion.
In February of 2002, IGN changed it so that all IGN forums required membership in its insider subscription program, including the popular IGNCB. This controversial move left a lot of loyal "regulars" unable to access the boards. The special Insider Boards were temporarily named the Asylum Boards, and later the I-Boards, which is their current name.
The Vestibule
Due to popular demand, on March 8th The Vestibule was created as a means of allowing non-subscribers to use the boards. It was originally intended to be a trial board, but it was frequented by both subscribers ("Insiders") and non-subscribers ("Outsiders"), and soon became the most popular board on IGN. As of 2005, the Vestibule have over 16 million total posts and hundreds of daily users. They are the busiest board on IGN as well as one of the busiest boards on the Internet.
The Vestibule has developed its own internet subculture. The proliferation of debatable topics such as religion, culture, and drugs makes the Vestibule one of the most accessible of the IGN forums.
As The Vestibule because busier and more popular, some regular users would say that the quality of the forum has declined. The forum has been inclined to have spam messages.
Icons
Unlike many other message boards on the internet, icons must be submitted and approved in a submission thread. Icons must be 80x80, under 5K, in the GIF format, and with a transparent background. Icons also can not be square, cuttoff at the top, pixelated or be "assy" in other ways. Only Insiders can use icons.
Closed sections
As the site has evolved, several older sections of it have fallen into disuse.
IGN Sci-Fi
Largely dead since 2002, this section of the site included movie news, comic book reviews, and other associated items. It has since fallen into disuse. It still exists at ], where its front page offers, among other things, the latest news on Terminator 3.
Criticisms of IGN
Like many popular gaming sites, IGN has its detractors. The most contentious issue is their ubiquitous advertisements. IGN was one of the first sites to use interstitials. Originally these ads were designed to show up after a set number of page links; currently, they now appear more often. Also, for a brief time, IGN's entire website was significantly changed to add Coca-Cola and McDonald's logos everywhere.
IGN has been criticized for displaying advertisements for its Insiders, who pay a yearly fee to receive added benefits. Many sites with subscriptions disable all ads for those who pay. After many complaints from Insiders, IGN gave them the option to disable the most intrusive of the ads. Banner ads, including Flash ads, are still shown to Insiders.
IGN defenders say that they should be given credit for developing a business model which allowed them to survive the dot-com crash of the late 1990s.
Another major criticism of IGN are their editors and board administrators. Some of the editors at IGN do not make any effort to visit the boards regularly to chat with IGN Insiders on gaming topics. IGN Xbox is especially guilty of this practice; as Douglass C. Perry and David Clayman have no interest in visiting the boards.
IGN have moderators who are responsible for maintaining the boards by editing profanity from posts and banning anyone who constantly breaks the TOS (Terms Of Service). However, IGN doesn't hand out modships to those who deserve them. They are often given to the "friends" of moderators. Often, IGN moderators are like a clique that feel they are above the regular users whether they are Insiders or Outsiders. Many of them respond to people in a cold, rude manner. To become a moderator, you need to be nominated by the other mods. However, some people get no response from the requests. There is a possibility that certain mods will want favors in return for a nomination. Those who are in good with mods away from the IGN Boards stand a better chance of becoming moderators themselves. Many of the mods abuse their power for no reason except to satisfy their ego; removing posts that aren't even in violation of the TOS just so they can show somebody up.
Tal Blevins, the head of IGN Entertainment Inc., has never responded to a PM from Insiders over complaints and they have a Customer Service area that is never attended to. They have had a history of showing no concern to anyone's queries. The head administrator treats all PMs to him as if they were written by a 13 year-old and has a history of being very disrespectful to those who try to contact him.
IGN have also been criticised for overrating games in reviews, giving a distorted view of a game's quality, such as when they gave the PC god game Black & White a rating of 9.7 . This is frequently the subject of ridicule from the community, such as with the Penny Arcade webcomic.